Remember Hypatia. [View all]

[LiberalAndProud]

The Vyckie Garrison video (Thanks, yortsed snacilbuper.) piqued my curiosity, so I spent some time at these sites: NoLongerQuivering and RecoveringGrace. I learned a lot about Bill Gothard. I also learned a lot about the intended role of women frighteningly prevalent in some sects of modern Christianity.

When I say to a liberal Christian, "You use the same book," that is no small condemnation. When we fail to acknowledge where the prevailing attitudes regarding women's roles come from, we do society a great diservice.

If I could change my DU handle, I would be RememberHypatia.

The last day of National Banned Books Week was waning into a listless Saturday afternoon, but I was still flush with my presentation, still fueled by the memory of a long-dead woman who had possessed my heart for the year it took me to write about her. She had lived 1,600 years before my birth, and had been murdered – by a man now deemed a Christian Saint. Brilliant and beautiful, daring and audacious, and silenced. . . brutally.

For an hour I had lectured on her life and times, and then entertained a Q&A with the audience for another hour before thanking them for turning out on this afternoon. I had signed books, I had shaken hands, and the room was growing vacant of bodies and sound.

“She should have kept her mouth shut.”
I stared hard at the well-dressed man who watched me.

- snip -

Mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, teacher, and curator of Alexandria’s Great Library. Essentially she achieved the “Renaissance man” ideal a thousand years before it was fashionable. And equipped with a sharpness of wit and tongue, she was a female Achilles when it came to debate and audacity.

My hope is that we will outgrow these dangerous ideas sometime before history repeats itself.